Faith and Fate
by DevilDog82
Summary: When a mission in Metropolis turns into a tragedy, one Justice League member begins to question her place in the world, or if she even has one.


Chapter One

The city shined below her, brilliant and coruscating in the early night. It was almost jewel-like in how every movement of your head, every time you landed atop another building, the patterns sparkled and changed. With so much activity, so much vibrant life to create the wondrous light, it was no wonder Metropolis was often called the worlds greatest city, the jewel of the Northeast.

There was a flash, then a concussive wave of sound exploded past and through Shayera's body from above. Thankfully, most of the lights below her weren't the sort that THAT had been. Still, far too much of it going around for her comfort. Unlike the Lanterns, Superman, or seemingly anyone else in the league, she needed her wings to fly. Wings which were still very much attached to her nervous system and didn't react well to plasma.  
She put her hand to her ear before speaking. "I see most of the devices are holding stationary now. Team 2 has eliminated a little over half of our count. What's the overall status?"

Naturally, the Detective was the first to answer over the comms. "56% of them are taking the code update in full, but Toymaker apparently decided to uplink and initiate an early count-down once he got wind of our intent. We have five minutes to disable those that remain in some way. Demolish them completely, if necessary."

The Boy Scout responded first. "Batman, we can't risk destroying these things like that. You said it yourself, each one would release hundreds of tons of force combined with the radiation of a dozen melting nuclear reactors. The death toll would be in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands."

"Then go for the internal core controls or the secondary flux relay. You know where they are. Remove these things from where their blast radius hits civilians or remove them from existence. Whatever works, but do it."

She looked up, catching sight of the sharp, dark shape as it cut through the low-hanging clouds right before it let loose with another volley. The former intelligence officer of Thanagar tracked the missiles from the Batwing to their destination, not more than half a mile from where she hovered. The Devastators were big, easily sixty feet wide apiece. Their oddly asymmetrical, spherical design and sinuous waving arms invited mental comparisons to some invertebrate species of her home world. Some of them she had been quite fond of, with the right utensil and a proper dose of spices. Of course, those species hadn't been made of exotic metal allows or powered by highly dangerous sub-atomic reactors. That was a bit more spice than anyone could want in a meal. Well, except maybe Captain Atom.

As she watched, the missiles closed on the Devastator. True to his brand of tactical brilliance, it was no straight approach Bruce had fed into the telemetry data. Nearly three hundred feed out, the cluster split ranks and veered on a wildly spiralling set of trajectories. At the last moment, they readjusted to their destination and hit the thrust for all it was worth, hoping to take advantage of a gap in the enemy defenses. It seemed to work, the waving arms only stopping half of the missiles. The others impacted in one-two punches to penetrate the outer hull and shatter the interior control circuits that were dumping the overload charge into the reactor. In moments, the great floating metal ball became just a heap of dimly glowing trash falling to the street below.

_One more down, only about fifty left. Easy._ She swerved hard mid-flight as one of the hundreds of toy-soldiers Toymaker had left wandering the roof-tops looked her way and spewed out a fifty foot line of white-hot molten lead. Giving one more flap before surging downward out of its line of fire, she spoke again, this time to her team-mates. "Team 2, status. We have about nineteen of these things in our zone. How many are down?"

"Arrow and Knight here, it's been tough but we've taken out five so far."

"Zatanna here, Atom and I are going to win the bet after all. Nine on our end!"

"Keep it professional people." _Bragging over comms again? I'm going to love this debriefing, I can tell._ "Aquaman, do you read?" As her downward motion quickened, she turned it into a quick arc that carried around a building's corner, missing it by inches, and right into a roiling mess of energy tipped mechanical arms.

"I am taking care of those monstrosities closest to my domain, as agreed. I have one more left. Now, please refrain from contacting me further unless I ask you for it".

_Oh, you ARE asking for it like that, buddy._ No time to put the royal brat in his place, though, as she turned her forward motion - that was about to carry her into several electricity limned blades on the Devastator's arms - into a quick, shallow ascent with a swoop of her wings. Careening just over the arm's reach, she gave one solid sweep of her mace underneath her to destroy the narrowly missed instruments of death. Then she brought the weapon around once more while reorienting her body to land feet-first on the side of the giant machine. Using her forward momentum to its maximum potential, she let out a fierce cry and brought the weapon down on the flux control panel.

It did the job well, maybe too well. Electricity and a hail of shrapnel exploded in her direction as the destruction her weapon wrought critically damaged the interior of the floating mechanical fiend. She felt the burns on her arms, winced as tiny metal fragments cut into her stomach, shoulder, and neck, and cried in pain as the blast threw her roughly into the glass windows of the office building. As she mentally processed the injuries, the sight of the floating instrument of terror's lights dimming as it sunk to the ground brought forth a chuckle. _Hro always did say I don't do half-measures_.

"Everyone, target and destroy any Devastators near civilians. Don't hold back, do it NOW."

THAT caught her attention. "Batman, we're almost clear here. What's happened?"

"He's just accelerated the countdown again. You have 40 seconds until critical mass, followed by detonation. On ALL remaining Devastators."

She heard Wonder Woman and Superman chime in at Batman's statement. Their groups had three left between them. _They can handle that, but what about group two's?_ "Flash, give me eyes. What's group 2's status?"

Wally's voice came through and sounded not even slightly worried or, ironically, rushed. "Hey there! Yeah, we're good, uh, 'cept for this one in the market corner over by the park. I've got it occupied, but, little help, maybe?"

Dear Wally. Even with his life likely on the line, you could hear the smile in his voice. "Copy that." She juked to the side to avoid one fire stream, then used her mace to block another before pushing hard upwards off the fractured glass wall. "I'm on the way. Knight, Zatanna, Aquaman, can any of you reach that area in time?" But she already knew the answer, before their negatives came in over the comm. Even on his winged steed, Shining Knight was slower and further away than her. Aquaman wasn't able to use his harpoon arm for rapid-urban movement like that (that poor bell-tower and its stained-glass artwork). Zatanna confirmed that she didn't have line-of-sight or teleportation capabilities ready on such short notice. It was up to Shayera alone to end this.

She put everything into her motion now, slipping into the state of flight mind where the primal portions of every Thanagarian's hunting instinct had been refined over millenia of evolution. Everything around her registered, processing in a trance-like state as her desire for maximum speed melded with a singular focus on her prey. A dodge here as a cluster of mini-missiles arced up and impacted below and behind her. A quick pivot and dip there through the gap between some electrical wires and ventilation ducts. Within arms reach of two of the incendiary spewing toys, casually demolishing them with a sweep of her mace. If it didn't delay or kill her, she took the hit, accepted the pain, and kept going. _Not these people, Toymaker. Not today._

She arced up over an apartment complex right as Batman came over the comms again. "Shayera, there are two left and Superman is finishing off one of them. Twenty seconds until reactor overload."

"Copy that". She surged forward to the waiting machine. Cocky thing, she thought she saw it waggle a bit in the air, taunting her. _Oh, you like dancing, do you? Here's how I tango._ She went straight for the foe, swatting aside the instruments it tried to use to cut and burn her. It was over in the blink of an eye, a half-dozen arms demolished and her within arms reach of the things hull. _Easy_.

She didn't see the one arm that came up from the other side of the machine's body until it was too late. It elongated, moving with incredible speed and making itself smaller width-wise. Having only a moment to react, she brought her mace down to deflect but the sinuous arm deformed itself around her weapon, striking her twice with parts above and below the point she blocked. She felt a blade pierce through wing and saw blood fly. She felt the shock as thousands of volts coursed from the metal of the Devastator's arm through her weapon and into her body. She felt the impact as the lower portion of the arm warped and hit her square in the chest. With one attack, the machine had stopped and flung the Thanagarian spiralling, bleeding, and dazed into the air.

It took a moment, but Shayera became dimly aware of multiple voices calling to her over her comm-link. She managed to right herself quickly. _Ok, no more of that. _Then she looked down in shock. It had sent her at least another couple hundred feet into the air. _DEFINITELY no more._ "Batman, how long do we have?"

"Eight seconds. I'm coming around to line up a shot. Do you -"

"Right." Then she plunged. Every muscle, every tendon, every nerve, everything of hers strained to get the most out of gravity, to get the up to speed as fast as possible. _Six seconds._

The machine seemed to turn and face her as her teammates appeared further down the road. The device readied all its arms outwards, ready to attack. Ready to kill. _Four seconds...can I make it?_

She was half-way there now. More. The interior of the Devastator burned with light so intense it hurt to look straight at it. People lining the street below panicked. Onlookers raced away from windows. A bus came turned a corner and came to a sudden stop, trying quickly to go into reverse. _Three seconds. It won't be enough_.

The great metal beast prepared to lunge and impale her. _Two seconds._ She pivoted mid-air, weapon arm extended backwards...

...and then threw her mace straight at the small, glowing opening in the shell she had spied earlier. The weapon shone, crackling with energy as it hurtled towards its target. _Please._

The Devastator panicked. The arms lunged. The mace hit.

Her world went white.


End file.
